What I Learned This Week – Carter Williams | 9.15.24

We’re excited to share that we will re-publish Carter Williams’ column – What I Learned This Week – here on Food Is Health. Carter is the Managing Director of iSelect Fund and also publishes the Creative Destruction newsletter. Make sure you check it out and subscribe.

What I learned this week…

The healthcare cost of poor nutrition is less about new science and more about better use of existing science.

Thomas Sowell is famous for saying, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” In the quest for longevity, the locus of tradeoffs could be centralized policy like Medicaid. Or it could be in our personal decisions. When individuals diverge from policy, like COVID vaccine, their reasons are a calculus across a range of truths, misinformation, and failed attempts (N of 1) Conventional wisdom was once that the earth is flat. A few individuals disagreed.

OpenAI’s new model, code-named Strawberry, unlocks pathways to existing knowledge previously obscured. While new knowledge has promise, the investment opportunity for AI and Food is Health is to replicate what good doctors do well, but removing the need for a doctor as a gatekeeper to that knowledge.

1) Possible investment thesis: Remove friction from Food is Health pathway.

2) New Business Model: to end the diabetes pandemic, pay innovators (or doctors) $20,000 for each patient who reverses type 2 diabetes and maintains weight loss. https://lnkd.in/g-yBmM9P

3) The affordability of obesity treatment will accelerate as technology improves. A new daily pill by Novo Nordisk, in Phase 1 trial, called Orforglipron, reduces body weight by up to 13% in just 3 months. https://lnkd.in/ga-T-NUy

4) Obesity cure will include pharmaceuticals, but as one step in a systems solution to food is health. Business models like Hims/Hers and direct-to-consumer over-the-counter access to continuous glucose monitors will out-compete pharma.

5) A possible unicorn: The startup that offers a reason for people to food rather than pharma to improve wellness with seamless daily intensity like social media or texting.

6) Major technology breakthroughs are built on decades of attempts that stopped too soon. GLP-1 was abandoned in a prior attempt in 1990. Should you never give up? https://lnkd.in/gHaweNQj

7) InVitro Gametogenesis: Turns any cell into a stem cell, then into a sperm or egg cell. Ultimately, it is a lower-cost way to address fertility issues. It permits reproduction without regard to cell source gender. A Brave New World.

8) The goal of computational agronomy should be reducing crop attribute variability. Once we master variability (Six Sigma), we will stabilize markets. The supply chain can then verticalize, optimizing to nutrient density (i.e. Omega 3/6), hashtag#foodishealth and/or oils for biofuel.

9) General Mills could team with Palantir and AgTech to beat Novo/Lilly.

10) Palantir Technologies is emerging as a systems of systems (ontology) across multiple domains with exponential network effects. I can’t figure out if their network effect is too powerful, or if we should build an alternate ontology across food is health vertical. But I am long the investment. https://lnkd.in/g7Tyc7_5

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